Body Confidence Blog Series: part one

Body confidence is such an important element to all of our lives, it effects us everyday, and having a poor body image can make us feel miserable in all aspects of our life. Though it’s such a key part of living a happy life, it’s not something that is explored, and isn’t something that we work on often enough. As a female, we more often than not develop a poor body image from a young age, from mainstream media telling what we should look like, as well as negativity we receive from others for not being what people expect us to look and act like, among other influences. Our own body image is how we perceive our body, we can look at it in either a healthy or unhealthy way. A healthy body image is one where we are happy with our body, understanding that we are who we are and can’t change this, an unhealthy view, with bad body image is where we dislike the way we look, and this often ruins our confidence.

Over a few blogs I’m going to be exploring these issues, and talking about ways that we can work on improving our body image. The reason I’m sharing this with you all is that this is a subject that I feel truly strong about, teaching classes for several years now I have heard so many peoples struggles and been able to help them gain more confidence, which has been one of the most rewarding parts of my work.

I’d like to firstly say with body Image, improvements aren’t usually seen straight away, there isn’t some magic formula, and you wake up in the morning feeling great, it’s takes a lot work, and even once you’re in a good place, there are still days were you’ll go back to your old ways of thinking, but it’s about identifying these, and working to combat them. It is a lot of work, but I believe the reward of this is truly worth it.

Today I’m exploring the well known saying of “you are what you eat”, which is commonly used for people on diets, but what I’m actually referring to is how the food we eat effects the way we feel about ourselves. If I eat an unbalanced diet of highly fatty, and greasy foods, all day everyday, I will feel fatty and greasy. In saying this I’m in not in any way suggesting that you stop eating the foods you love, I myself am the worlds biggest chocolate fiend, but rather saying it’s good to educate yourself on what a healthy balanced diet is. Most of us live quite busy lives which can leave us feeling run down, and it’s surprising how often this comes down to dietary imbalances. Moderation is definitely key, eat what you love, just not all the time. I’d definitely recommend if you have trouble finding the right amount of foods to eat, to see a profession nutritionist.

In conjunction with this exercise is so important for our health, it’s recommend to complete 30 minutes of physical exercise a day. While exercise can help us loose weight, the reason I’m bringing this point up is more for the way it makes us feel about ourselves, exercising release endorphins and makes us feel healthy and clean, if I go for a period of time without exercising, I do start to feel not myself. There is quite a large health movement at tthe moment, which is fantastic to see, but there are a lot of us out there, that haven’t felt the calling to this, if you’re someone who finds it hard to be motivated or you just lack an interest I cannot recommend enough trying a funner activity than to going to the gym, there are so many options like a dance class, horse riding, swimming, walking the dog, leisure bike rides, and walking with a friend, among just a few I can name.

“A healthy, fit body is your best fashion accessory.” Making simple lifestyle changes can improve our outlook on our body so much, being happy and healthy will aid your body image in the right direction.